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A wealth of national and political ads have helped produced good third quarter for small- to mid-sized TV station groups, such as Gray Television Group, Barrington Broadcasting Group and Saga Communications. Sales were up 28% for Gray, 20.1% for Barrington and 5% for Saga.

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Gray Television has become the first non-NBC-owned station group to sign an agreement with NBCUniversal covering TV Everywhere platforms. "[The] agreement with Gray Television will enable local viewers in Gray's 24 markets to watch those stations' NBC broadcasts live across multiple platforms, including on a computer, tablet or smartphone, both in and out of their homes," said NBC's Rhonda Brockmann.

Subscribers to DirecTV and other pay TV rivals to Comcast could see their bills go up 3% a month because of the proposed alliance of Comcast and NBC Universal, a study has found. Although Comcast customers would not get bigger bills during the first year of merged companies, the cable conglomerate would gain "headroom" to hike its fees in the face of higher charges from rivals, according to the study for the American Cable Association. Comcast questioned the report's findings and said it was a stalling tactic to slow down the federal review of the merger.

Major pay TV providers claim the economy -- not cord-cutting -- is the main reason behind the second consecutive quarterly decline in TV subscribers. The number of paying customers in Q3 dropped about 108,000, after an estimated loss of 216,000 in Q2. The traditional pay services face growing competition from broadband-only subscription rivals, such as Netflix, as well as a cadre of free streaming services, including FilmOn, Ivi and ATDHE.net. Some of the latter are engaged in legal disputes over the rights to their content.

Thomas Herwitz, the ex-president of station operations for Fox Television, has been appointed president of Freedom Broadcasting. Herwitz, who is helming Freedom's portfolio of eight TV outlets, takes over the position from Doreen Wade.

Sinclair Broadcasting expects this year's political ads to total about $42 million, a slight uptick over the 2008 election. The station group for Q3 notched a 10% increase in local ads and a 14% jump in national, spots, compared with 2009. Meanwhile, Nexstar Broadcasting in Q3 tallied a 12% rise in sales to $57 million, including $7 million in political ads.